blech:
posted on 2005/08/01 09:31
First, Slashdot picks up not on the availability of Mac OS X Intel torrents, but on (misreading) point two of that article.
Somehow "The Rosetta system uses the Trusted Platform Module (TPM)" has turned into "the new Intel kernel Apple has included with the Developer Kit DVD uses TCPA/TPM DRM".
Rosetta is the PPC emulator build into Mac OS X for Intel. It translates any code that's not been compiled for x86 (ie, old code for PPC) into x86 code on the fly, so that it can be run on the other type of processor.
Now, if all that meant was that some PPC native apps wouldn't run on an "untrusted" machine, that would be annoying. However, it seems that (as of the developer release, anyway) some of the GUI layer code is still not recompiled.
Now, obviously, there's a split between the GUI and the kernel in Mac OS X. You can, as one commenter on Slashdot notes, already get the kernel underlying Mac OS X for Intel and compile it, no DRM.
It seems from another comment that the use of TPM is implemented as a kernel module, 'AppleTPMACPI.kext', but there's still a confusion here between the GUI level and the kernel. Just because there's a .kext doesn't mean you need it to boot.
Of course, when Cory Doctorow hears this he goes into batshit-flaming-paranoia mode.
He says "The point of Trusted Computing is to make it hard -- impossible, if you believe the snake-oil salesmen from the Trusted Computing world -- to open a document in a player other than the one that wrote it in the first place, unless the application vendor authorizes it.".
No, the point here is to stop Apple's "document"- the OS- from running on a "player"- or "computer" as we call it in Sensible Land- that they didn't sell. Now, this might be a bit annoying, but I don't see how it's not within their rights.
Now, they might be planning to add hardware-using DRM beyond that, but it's hard to tell that now. Of course Cory suspects the worst, but it remains just that- suspicion.
for the first time since 1979, I won't use an Apple product as my main computer. I may even have my tattoo removed
You have an Apple tattoo? But they're evil and corporate and... oh, wait, so's Boing Boing. Oh well.
[ 0 days, 1 hour later ]
The:
The classic mistake is, of course, tattooing yourself with the name of your main squeeze.
From here
We hate you all. Yes, especially you. Sod off and DIE